HEC chairman vows to focus on weaker areas of higher education

‘Commission to continue focus over access to education, improvement of quality to socio-economic needs of society’

Regretting poor performance of the students in recently held CSS exams, Higher Education Commission (HEC) Chairman Dr Tariq Banuri vowed on Wednesday to focus more on week areas of higher education.

The commission would continue to focus over access to education, improvement of quality and relevance of research to the socio-economic needs of the society, he said while addressing a reception, arranged by the Inter University Consortium for Promotion of Social Sciences in collaboration with American Institute of Studies and Quaide-e-Azam University Alumni Association in Islamabad.

Dr Banuri stressed the need to increase number of students and the faculty at around 10% annually.

“We need to invest in the improvement of quality, capacity building of faculty members. We have issues in research methodology which need to be resolved,” he remarked.

“Personally I will try to bring people together so that they can exchange knowledge among them,” he added.



The HEC chairman said that equal importance will be given to education and research and wished to have a university in which all educationists would share their knowledge.

Explaining his future plans, he expressed to build a national academy for higher education for the training and capacity building of the vice chancellors and faculties.

“As a community we need to build a political momentum to get attention of the government for promotion of quality education … we will convince the government that investment in quality education should be their focus,” Dr Banuri explained.



“I am the first HEC chairman who is a social scientist and I am the first one who had been the president of students unions,” he said.

While sharing his goals, Dr Banuri stressed upon the need for autonomy of universities, terming it to be the only way to achieve success. He further underlined the need for improving management of the higher educational institutions and added the governance of the universities would be improved.